I had an OBE. My body was numb, like there was pins all over it. I woke up with a false awakening, did a reality check and went down the stairs and out the front door which I imagined to be a portal to the Philippines (My home country) I woke up before I got to the Philippines with another false awakening, this time not bothering to do a reality check and I told my sister all about it in the dream and finally woke up to reality.

Man, I really hope I can master using those false awakenings to your advantage because I seem to get a lot of those. I always tell myself i'll do a reality check every time I wake up but it just hasn't gotten into my schedule yet. Nice dream though, I sincerely hope that you find that portal to your homeland soon.

edit: fun fact, I once had a dream with so many false awakenings I thought I was stuck dreaming forever. I know this has happened to a lot of people, but it was WHACK..

Those false awakenings can be so convincing sometimes. I lucid dream a lot but I still get duped. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 reality checks before one finally works.

What I do now, if I suspect it's a false awakening, is simply get up and walk around the house. Something is bound to be out of place and especially if I look out the front door or out a window. I have nothing to lose. Maybe some embarassment, but I have yet to be mistaken, but it can feel so real sometimes it's hard to do. It funny how I always have a sneaking suspicion anyway, but it still eludes me and I think, "Nah, this is real of course". Despite the fact that my furniture is out of place. (We tend to think illogically in dreams, and forget about real life memories of how things were).

Every lucid dreamer must experience false awakenings on occasion. I tend to get them after a lucid dream. I'd wake up and try to write it down or tell somebody about the dream I just had, oblivious to the fact that I myself am still dreaming. It happens often enough that I am ready for them and expect them. But still..... sometimes I just get duped and my 'mental lucid light switch' gets turned off.

What's really weird is waking up in your bed from a lucid dream and telling people about how cool it was, going to your computer to post about it on this forum, then finding out that even THAT was a dream and waking up from the entire thing thinking "What the hell just happened?"

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

I use to get false awakenings and start jotting down my notes on a piece of paper and it never worked! I was still in a dream. I never figured it out until later but it was a learning curve. I learned later, but man those false awakenings can be so convincing I don't blame anybody for getting duped. I do too. I did last night, and it's very common for me and I think comes with the territory with lucid dreamers. I roll with it and find it fun.